What goes on behind the scene

What happens behind the scene?

The recruitment industry can sometimes be a little bit misunderstood, it can get a bad rep because of one candidate’s bad experience and, unfortunately, some recruiters are not that great.

Outside of the recruiter world it is easy to get annoyed when you don’t get feedback on a role you have applied for straight away, I have been in that position and it doesn’t feel great, but working in recruitment I now understand that it isn’t an instant process.

I want to take a look at this recruitment process, and what really happens behind the scenes at KDR.

Finding the candidate

When we have a new job to fill for a client they will have a tick list of skills they want to hire for, sometimes this can be quite specific and others a bit vaguer. To find these candidates we can actively do 2 things:

·        Search for candidates with relevant skills on job boards and social media

·        Headhunt passive candidates for particularly difficult to fill roles

We also post our adverts to job boards and we do receive every application that is made, at KDR we respond to every single application whether the skills are relevant or not. If your skills are not entirely relevant to the job but you are in our industry we will also aim to ring you for future reference or to see if any of my colleagues have more suitable roles.

Every candidate we speak to we qualify to find out what their motivators are to move company and what their ideal job is. Doing this means that we never just fire CVs out, we make sure the role is right for the candidate first.

Sending CVs

Our clients are using a recruitment agency because they don’t have time to sift through the amount of applications they would receive or to search endlessly on job boards. Therefore, we have to create shortlist of 3 – 4 strong candidate profiles to send across.

Once we believe we have 3 - 4 strong candidates we will send your CV to our client, we never do this without your permission so you will always know what roles you are going forward to. This is where the process can get slowed down.

Once we send the CV it is almost taken out of our control, some clients can give feedback on CVs within a couple of hours, some in a couple of days (even weeks in extreme cases). We can do our part in chasing with follow up emails and phone calls and once we have feedback, weather positive or negative, we will pass on to the candidate. There is nothing worse than not hearing anything back from an application.

Interview

If your application is successful and you’re invited to an interview, this can be over the phone or face-to-face, we will always do a full prep. We make sure that the candidate has done their research, knows what answers they will be giving and what questions to ask, we try to make sure that every single candidate that goes to an interview feels as prepared and confident as they can be.

Once the interview is finished we will also do a debrief to find out your thoughts, and if you think it was successful or not. We also do this to gain feedback on the client as it helps us to understand their interview style better.

Similar with the CV submission waiting for interview feedback from a client can be a time-consuming process, we will always do our best to get you feedback within 24 hours but sometimes this isn’t possible. Again, once we have feedback we will pass it on to the candidate, if the feedback is negative we will also try to work this out with the candidate and give advice. We will never just give negative feedback and say goodbye, we like to think of it as constructive criticism, honest feedback is vital!

Offer

If you’ve been successful and been offered a job by our client this can seem like the longest part of the process. Depending on the client or candidate there can be a lot of going backwards and forwards as the contract is finalised. Making sure the candidate has the right salary for them, and ensuring the client is aware of notice periods can really slow this down.

Once an offer has been accepted our job doesn’t stop there, we always make sure our new starters are ready for their first day and know all the information they need to start (you can also keep an eye out for a congratulatory present in the post!). We’ll also keep in touch with you throughout your role to make sure you are happy.

Even when we fill a role our job never ends with the candidate.

While not all recruitment agencies are the same and have the same process, here at KDR we make sure we do right by the candidate. We make sure we work as quickly for you, and in the best possible way. Every day we encounter candidates with different skills, needs, wants and experience and the process can be different for everyone, finding the right candidate for a client is not as easy as it seems.

Have you had a particularly good or bad experience with the recruitment process? I’d love to hear thoughts in the comments below

KDR Recruitment is the home of the best Information Management and Data Analytics jobs. For the latest career advice check out the KDR blog or follow the LinkedIn page.